Popless Week 17: Mixing Pop And Politics

After 17 years
of professional music-reviewing, Noel Murray is taking time off from all new
music, and is revisiting his record collection in alphabetical order, to take
stock of what he's amassed, and consider what he still needs.

One
of the biggest problems with the introduction of "red state" and "blue state"
to the American political lexicon is that those kind of either-or terms measure
regional political differences with the polling equivalent of a pregnancy test.
A woman can't be 55% pregnant, and according to cable news pundits, a state
can't be 55% Republican. For rhetorical purposes, it's all or nothing. But then
what do you do with a state like—oh, just to pick one at
random—Arkansas? The Natural State went for Bush in the past two presidential
elections, and has provided the home base from which Mike Huckabee has become a
significant player in conservative circles. But Arkansas can also claim
prominent Democrats Wesley Clark and Bill Clinton, and the state currently has
a Democrat in the governor's mansion, two Democratic senators, and three
Democrats in the House out of a possible four. Then again, the political
positions of the average elected Arkansas Democrat would likely fall to the
right of the average elected Massachusetts Republican. So, Arkansas: red or
blue?

Since fourth grade, I've been friends—best friends,
really—with a guy whose political inclinations stand about 180 degrees
apart from my own. And that's been a rare gift. Over the decades my friend Rob
and I have bickered with each other over religion, economics, foreign policy,
and the culture wars, and we've come to the point recently where we know each
other's positions so well that we don't really argue much at all. Instead, we
anticipate what each other might say, and concede points before we even get to
the real meat of our disagreement. It saves time, and—for me at
least—it's helped me strengthen what I believe in. Rob's skepticism helps
remind me what I'm really arguing for, and keeps me from getting hung up on the
usual right-wing and left-wing talking points.

Because
of that, I've found that I've lost patience with editorials, movies, TV shows,
and documentaries that argue "my" positions in petty, one-sided ways. I don't
have much use for writers, directors, and actors who smugly spout liberal
pieties as though they were common-sense truth, without bothering to "show
their work," as it were, and break down how they reached a conclusive,
no-room-for-doubt position on, say, abortion, or the war in Iraq. I keep
hearing what they say through the ears of my right-leaning friends and family
members, who've lived most of their lives with an entertainment industry that
paints them as villains or morons (or both).

So
I'd probably bristle at a movie that said, flatly, "Corporate America sucks and
Dick Cheney is an evil asshole." And yet if I heard that sentiment in a song, I
just might whoop. Music is the one form of entertainment where shallow,
ill-considered polemics are okay with me. It's definitely possible to write
nuanced political songs—last week's Primer subject Elvis Costello has
done a fine job with it, especially in the anti-war masterpiece
"Shipbuilding"—but by and large, a verse-chorus-verse format is hardly
the place to look for careful reasoning. I'm perfectly fine with getting an
immediate quick-hit of rage and dissent, because music can deliver a rush of
feeling better than almost any other medium, and sometimes I'd rather that
feeling be blunt and shallow.

Is
that inconsistent? Or hypocritical? Probably. But just as I try not to be one
of those movie critics who vets every film to make sure that it fits a set of
pre-ordained moral criteria, I also try not to be the kind of music critic who
demands all songs fall within certain guidelines of taste. (And please note the
word "try" in that sentence; I frequently fail to live up to my own ideals.) I
definitely get irritated by bombast, both sonic and lyrical, but if it suits
the song and the song moves me, tacky can be beautiful.

More
to the point though, the communal aspect of music fandom—which these days
includes chatting on the Internet with like-minded strangers as well as singing
along in the car with your friends and going to shows with fellow
scenesters—yields naturally to sloganeering. Billy Bragg once sang that
"wearing badges is not enough in days like these," by which he meant that
constraining political convictions to T-shirts isn't much help when the world's
in crisis. And he's absolutely right. But a good rabble-rousing song—or a
good T-shirt—can make a difference, for the way it raises awareness and even
galvanizes.

The
truth is that individualism can be hard for some. Coming out in favor of one
point of view when all the loudest voices in your community are saying the
opposite can seem like more trouble than it's worth. But when the national
media pigeonholes an entire region, a "blue" kid stuck in a "red" state can
still go to a concert by Bragg or Ted Leo or Michael Franti and learn something
inspiring: You are not alone.

*****************

Pieces Of The Puzzle Game Theory

Years
Of Operation
1981-89

Fits
Between
Big Star and The Strawberry Alarm Clock

Personal
Correspondence
The short-lived, oft-glorious indie label Enigma Records put out a couple of
anthologies titled The Enigma Variations in the mid-'80s, and they were essential
listening during my high school years. The Enigma Variations parts one and two
brought together disparate threads of the college rock scene—mainstream
guitar-pop like The Smithereens, frizzy Americana like Green On Red, paisley
underground heroes like The Rain Parade, novelty satirists like Mojo Nixon, and
so on—and made it seem like there was a legitimate underground rock
movement going on in the U.S., and that it was on the verge of taking over. One
of the bands that I discovered via The Enigma Variations was Game Theory, who in
my senior year of high school and freshman year of college meant as much to me
as the Pixies or Dinosaur Jr. or any of the other under-the-radar acts I'd
pledged my love to. Only Game Theory never crossed over to the extent that
Pixies or Dinosaur Jr. did, most likely because of what bandleader Scott Miller
so aptly described in the liner notes of the band's records as his "miserable
whine." It didn't help either that Miller had such a will to weirdness,
manifested in subtle and overt nods to James Joyce and the "automatic writing"
exercises of the beatniks. He dressed up jangly guitar-pop with buzzy
synthesizers (a sound that's always reminded me of the soundtrack to the
early-'70s Tarzan cartoons) and diced-up bits of noise. On Game Theory's superb
double-album Lolita Nation, Miller dedicated much of side three to a
series of song-snippets that lasted less than 10 seconds. Miller continued some
of that experimentation with his next band, The Loud Family, but some trends
that began with Game Theory's final album 2 Steps From The Middle Ages—most notably
Miller's weakening songcraft—continued, and even when The Loud Family
straightened up, they never captured my imagination the way that Game Theory's
witty, tuneful, puckishly odd music did. For a while, Game Theory were the
champions of the minor leagues.

Enduring
presence?
I have to confess that I cheated a bit this week. All of my Game Theory is on
vinyl or on cassette, and I've never gotten around to transferring any of it
into MP3 form (even though I bought a tool to do that last Christmas). Nor can
I—or you—readily buy any Game Theory on CD, because all the band's
albums are out-of-print and fetching a minimum of 100 bucks each on eBay right
now. But I didn't want to exclude Game Theory the way I've excluded major acts
like Captain Beefheart, Brian Eno and Funkadelic, so I found a streaming Game
Theory song on a music blog, and I procured the necessary software to record it
and upload it myself. When this project is over and I have the time for such
frivolity, I look forward to fiddling with my vinyl-ripper and making myself a Game
Theory anthology. For now though, this one song will have to do.

Gang Of Four

Years
Of Operation
1977-84, 1990-present

Fits
Between
Shriekback and Clinic

Personal
Correspondence
Here's another band—like The Feelies a few weeks back—who were
properly introduced to me via Rolling Stone magazine's late-'80s
attempts at rock canon-building. All I really knew by Gang Of Four at the time
was the college radio hit "I Love A Man In A Uniform," but then I improbably
found a cassette copy of Entertainment! in a record store in rural Kansas when I
was visiting my dad the summer before college, and there was something
strangely powerful about receiving ironically stentorian messages promoting
consumerism and exploitation while sitting in the attic room of a tiny house
near a wheat field. That album—and Go4's third album Songs Of The Free, to a lesser
extent—really transport the listener to a different place, at once
vaguely futuristic yet familiar from regressive-leaning propaganda films. The
band also stacked beats better than almost any of their dancefloor-minded
post-punk brethren. The resulting music can seem a little rigid and chilly, but
that was part of the point: to create something equally alluring and
off-putting, to help the listener see through fascism at its grossest and
pettiest.

Enduring
presence?
Some Gang Of Four fans were appalled by the band's recent album Return The
Gift,
for which the band re-recorded a handful of their best-known songs with the
arrangements they now use when they play them live. I thought it was great,
like a live album without the sonic compromises. What that record mainly proved
is that as a performing unit, Gang Of Four are still aces. If they'd applied
those chops to an inferior set of new material, I'm not sure it would've been
so impressive. As for Gang Of Four's ongoing influence, it's definitely been
more pervasive since the dawn of the '00s than it was in the wake of their
initial run. I used to wonder why more people didn't rip off Gang Of Four; by
2006, I would've been happy never to hear another Go4 imitator ever again.

Genesis

Years
Of Operation
1967-99; 2006-present

Fits
Between
King Crimson and TV On The Radio

Personal
Correspondence
So which Genesis suits you best? Do you like Peter Gabriel wearing crazy masks
and singing complicated multi-part suites based on folklore and urban
alienation? Or do you like Phil Collins singing goofy, overly synthesized songs
about immigration and televangelism (in between spooky anthems and tender sap)?
Myself, I split the difference. I like the Genesis of Duke and Abacab, still readily able to
fall into that familiar proggy cadence, yet able to condense and brighten their
sound for radio play.

Enduring
presence?
Phil Collins' post-1985 solo career hasn't made it easy to be a Genesis fan,
and certainly the Collins-led Genesis has had its share of howlingly awful
songs too. But at their best and most ambitious, the latter-period Genesis
isn't as far removed from the Gabriel era as some purists insist. There's still
something grand and fully conceived about the Genesis sound, even as their
subject matter remains human-scaled. And Collins has saved some of his best
sappy AC ballads for Genesis—"Hold On My Heart," for example—and
even though they don't sound particularly "Genesis-y," they're fine on their
own. It's hard to craft a fluid, comprehensible Genesis anthology, but it's not
so hard to come up with an hour or two of really amazing Genesis songs, drawing
from all the eras. (Of course it helps that some of the best early songs are
over 10 minutes long.)

[pagebreak] The Geraldine Fibbers

Years
Of Operation
1994-97

Fits
Between
Helium and Wilco

Personal
Correspondence
I'd hesitate to call The Geraldine Fibbers "alt-country," even though twang and
lope was a major part of the band's shtick during their brief existence in the
mid-'90s, and even though bandleader Carla Bozulich was known to trot out
C&W; covers practically on-demand. But The Geraldine Fibbers were so much rawer
and so much more explosive than the rest of the No Depression crowd; they were far
more a punk band than a roots-rock outfit. They could be hard to take at times
too, although on the whole, the albums Lost Somewhere Between The Earth And
My Home
and Butch
are both riveting listening, geared to those willing to hold on tight and
follow Bozulich into some pretty nerve-wracking places.

Enduring
presence?
Because they broke up so early and because Bozulich's solo career has been so
erratic, I think The Geraldine Fibbers have kind fallen out of the '90s
alt-rock canon. Which is a shame. (If nothing else, fans of late-period Wilco
should pick up Butch in order to enjoy Nels Cline's unearthly guitar playing.)
Personally, I revisit the band a few times a year—usually exclusively
over headphones, since Bozulich makes noises that frighten the other members of
my household—and whenever an Atlanta Braves hitter smacks a long fly
ball, I frequently holler, "Get thee gone!" in honor of a Fibbers EP. Now
that's a legacy!

The Glands

Years
Of Operation
1997-present (?)

Fits
Between
Tom Petty and Grifters

Personal
Correspondence
I failed to cite The Glands when I wrote about the best of the new Southern
rockers a few weeks ago—an oversight I can chalk up to the band's
extended absence from the critical spotlight. (Are they even around anymore? I
could find nothing conclusive online.) In a way, The Glands have always
suffered from bad timing. The band's 1998 debut album Double Thriller was a typically sloppy
indie-rock record with a handful of solid songs buried in the murk, and their
second—the near-masterpiece The Glands—bounced them from
an indie-label to a semi-major and didn't receive any real promotional push
until late in 2000, well after most writers' deadlines for their best of the
year lists. The Glands started developing a following throughout '01, as The
Glands
was passed from true believer to true believer, and as the band toured the
country with the likes of Modest Mouse and Beachwood Sparks. Critics everywhere
were poised to make them darlings whenever they released another album. But
then… nothing. I dug around to see if I could find anything I'd written about
them, and the best I could do was a pick I wrote for a then-upcoming Nashville
show: "The immediate reference points for the quartet's sound are Pavement and
Guided By Voices; the former because of the laid-back, elastic approach to
rhythm and guitar-based hooks, and the latter because bandleader Ross Shapiro
is in his late thirties and he scrapes up a basement-moistened pop sensibility
that's as coated in 70s AM radio as 80s college rock. At times, The Glands comes on like a lost
classic from 1978, to be filed between Tom Petty's first album and The Rolling
Stones' Some Girls.
Brightened up with piano, strings or harmonica when necessary, Shapiro's songs
mostly have the relaxed feel of a late afternoon in a Georgia summer, when the
humidity drives everyone indoors for the first of many cold beers. It's the
sound of a band rehearsal after everyone's warmed up but about an hour or so
before they get messy."

Enduring
presence?
When I first heard The Glands, I had one of those moments of clarity that
reminds me why I love rock 'n' roll. It's an album that sounds both familiar
and new, full of rough edges, soaring choruses, and livewire guitar solos. It's
informed by the classics, but totally timely—in that whenever I hear it,
it's exactly the album I want to be listening to at that time.

Glen Campbell

Years
Of Operation
1962-present

Fits
Between
Charlie Rich and Kenny Rogers

Personal
Correspondence
We watched a lot of variety shows in our house in the '70s, particularly those
hosted by country-leaning musicians. I don't have any specific memory of
watching The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour, because I would've been not-quite 2
when it went off the air, but when I see old footage of Campbell from that show
and elsewhere, the memories of a thousand nights spent watching blow-dried,
brightly attired, smooth-voiced entertainers on barely dressed soundstages come
rushing back. Campbell's really an interesting figure in the '60s and '70s pop
scene, because while his public persona was built on polished TV performances
and "Rhinestone Cowboy," he'd been an accomplished L.A. session musician by age
22, and had performed on record and on stage with artists as diverse and
essential as Frank Sinatra, The Beach Boys, The Righteous Brothers, and The
Champs. (That's Campbell's guitar on "Tequila.") He found his groove as a solo
artist in the late '60s as an interpreter of some of the best songwriters of
his era—in particular Jimmy Webb, who provided Campbell with his first
massive hit, "Wichita Lineman," a song that nearly always makes my wife cry.
Though Campbell's largely associated with country music, "Wichita Lineman"
transcends genre. It's pure pop poetry, evoking the feeling of need and
profound loneliness that fills anyone who's more than a day's drive from where
they'd really like to be.

Enduring
presence?
Campbell's Webb-penned hits (which also include "Galveston," "By The Time I Get
To Phoenix" and "Where's The Playground, Susie?") are his best, but he's also
responsible for one of the best versions of John Hartford's timeless "Gentle On
My Mind," as well as superb pop-country like "Southern Nights" and, yes,
"Rhinestone Cowboy." He fascinates me as one of the consummate examples of a
recording industry professional who seems bland on the surface, yet is so
gifted and so drawn to prickly material that he draws people to wonder what's going
on underneath.

Glossary

Years
Of Operation
1997-present

Fits
Between
Silos and Eleventh Dream Day

Personal
Correspondence
I first heard Glossary as part of my regular beat covering local bands for the
alt-weekly Nashville Scene in the '90s, and I remember thinking that from
the start—on the smartly titled Southern By The Grace Of Location—that bandleader
Joey Kneiser had an uncanny ability to grasp the complexities of contemporary
Southern life, and to express them in rollicking roots-rock songs that didn't
sound pre-digested. Glossary has only gotten better since, recording three
consecutive albums that—if there were any justice to the music
business—would be staples of rock radio and critics' lists. About 2003's How
We Handle Our Midnights, I wrote, "For six years, singer-songwriter-guitarist Joey
Kneiser and the rest of his small-town Tennessee sextet have employed a
bash-it-out, kitchen sink approach reminiscent of mid-'90s indie-rockers like
Butterglory and Small Factory, but with a flair for expansiveness and guitar
heroism that rivals proto-grunge acts Eleventh Dream Day and Cell. The band
tends to take their shambling tunefulness and stretch out, playing closely
together and following their own natural momentum. On How We Handle Our
Midnights,
Kneiser and company nod to their country and classic rock influences,
generating a warm, rootsy sound while still raising a racket and heading off in
unexpected directions. The album stays strong by returning to the idea of
youthful dreams tempered by gradual acceptance of the go-nowhere pace of Middle
America. There's echoes of strip-mall practice spaces and undeveloped grassy
lots in Glossary's wall-rattling stomps, and an understanding of the
restlessness that comes from being stuck." Then about 2006's For What I
Don't Become:
"There are local bands that build a buzz and a following until they get a crack
at going national, and then there are local bands like Murfreesboro, TN's
Glossary, that keep at it year after year because there's something that needs
to be expressed, even if no more than a few thousand people ever hear it. Those
bands are the rock equivalent of regional filmmakers, turning out low-budget,
heartfelt stories that zero in on lifestyles and locations that the mainstream
media overlooks. For What I Don't Become is yet another Glossary album about
people who work hard and don't seem to get anywhere. The centerpiece song is
'Days Go By,' a sprawling, scorching twang-rocker that makes the title phrase
more haunting by adding the words, 'even when we don't want 'em to.' For
What I Don't Become
weighs its rootsy kick against a strong note of loneliness, but the dominant
tone of the album is set by the opening song 'Shaking Like A Flame,' which
rumbles like a locomotive even as Kneiser sings about how it feels to rust.
This may be one of the most exultant albums ever made about failure."
Glossary's fifth LP The Better Angels Of Our Nature was self-released late
last year, and is currently
available as a free download on the band's website. If you like it,
buy a hard copy. Either way, I'm sure the band will happy enough to know that
someone out there is listening.

Enduring
presence?
Whenever I doubt the purpose of rock criticism, I think about bands like
Glossary, that need strong advocates, and don't always get them. Glossary has
been around for 10 years, and have remained largely ignored by the critical
establishment, not because they're been dismissed, but because almost no one
has heard
them. There are people out there right now who are Glossary fans and don't even
know it yet. Could you be one of them?

The Go-Go's

Years
Of Operation
1978-85 (essentially)

Fits
Between
The B-52's and The Bangles

Personal
Correspondence
Even before I saw the infamous "groupie video," The Go-Go's were shaping my
ideal of female sexuality. The band's Talk Show came out during that
golden year of 1984, when I was 13 years old and expanding my ideas about
music, literature, movies, politics, and women. As I mentioned when I wrote
about The Cars a few weeks back, in '84 and '85 I didn't yet have to get a
summer job, so I spent hours on end reading, listening to the radio, watching
late night television, and thinking, and it was because I had time to do the
latter that everything I saw and read and heard seemed more intense and
important. And then here came The Go-Go's, wearing eye-catching outfits and
bopping around to songs that alternated between "I can have a good time without
you" and "No, wait, I love you, come back." There was something alluring about
the idea of strong-willed, pretty, fashionable women who didn't mind being
alone but hated being lonely.

Enduring
presence?
Because of Belinda Carlisle's post-Go-Go's career as a fairly bland pop
chanteuse, the band could be dismissed as pre-fab sell-outs, exploiting
elements of the West Coast punk scene while staying fully in the pocket of the
industry. And let's face it: Beauty And The Beat aside, none of the
band's three hit albums are unassailable. But take the best of all three (as
their hits album Greatest mostly does, and Return To The Valley Of The
Go-Go's does
even better) and you've got some of the catchiest, most happy-making music of
the early '80s.

Gomez

Years
Of Operation
1996-present

Fits
Between
Pearl Jam and Free

Personal
Correspondence
The early success of British roots-rockers Gomez stemmed largely from
curiosity, because while most late-'90s Brit-poppers were trying to revive The
Kinks, Gomez were shooting for Joe Cocker. Gomez's debut album Bring It On came out in 1998 in the
waning days of Britpop, and at the time, the record stirred interest by
offering an earthy alternative to the glammed-up, arena-ready post-mod of
Oasis, Blur, and their ilk. From the beginning, Gomez has drawn on the same
blues/folk tradition that's informed rockers from The Band and The Allman
Brothers to Phish and Blues Traveler, but the youthful British quintet is about
as "rootsy" as Beck—which is to say that, like Beck, Gomez maintains a
certain intellectual remove from their slide-guitar-washed, groove-heavy music.
The band's art-rock leanings ran them aground on 1999's Liquid Skin, and 2000's stopgap
B-sides and rarities compilation Abandoned Shopping Trolley Hotline did little to
contravene their reputation as talented dullards. But then the album In Our
Gun
largely fulfilled the band's early promise, integrating touches of
Radiohead-style avant-garde atmospherics into a set of songs that were on the
whole shorter, looser and punchier than anything in the prior Gomez catalog.
Since then they've gone back to being hit-and-miss, but I've stuck with them
anyway, because I like their multiple-vocalist approach and general
well-meaning vibe.

Enduring
presence?
Gomez is a prime example of the good-not-great band that maintains enough
momentum to record a slew of albums without ever building an enormous fan base.
I like them, but I could easily live without them. I include them in this
section largely because they're one of many bands that I've kept on my "watch"
list long after I've gathered plenty of evidence that they're not going to
reward my attention.

[pagebreak] Gorky's Zygotic Mynci

Years
Of Operation
1991-2006

Fits
Between
Soft Machine and Paul McCartney

Personal
Correspondence
I have to give it up for any band as unabashedly geeky as GZM often were, and for
any band able to hold onto their hometown roots—they sometime sang in
Welsh, for heaven's sake—while roaming fairly freely, exploring prog,
Euro-folk, glam, and whatever else caught their fleeting fancy. Prog-rock acts
like Genesis, Jethro Tull, and Emerson, Lake and Palmer are sometimes derided
for the often unbearable pretension with which they attempted to mold rock onto
classical music frames. But they had another, worthier mission: to move British
pop music away from the crusty, city-bound, dance-hall tradition and to find
instead a link between American blues music and the folk songs of the European
hills. At their best, Gorky's Zygotic Mynci recalled the highland mist and
mysticism of '70s prog while indulging rowdier pub music. They could test fans'
patience, but there was no one else like them.

Enduring
presence?
When it comes to GZM, I like the side they showed on Barafundle, which sounds a little
like Wings in a pastoral mode. It's so eccentric, and so beautiful.

Stray Tracks

From the fringes of the collection, a few songs to share….

Galaxie 500, "Flowers"

Galaxie
500's reputation in the college/alternative/indie rock sphere has always
been—in my opinion—somewhat out of proportion to their actual
influence and output, though it's hard to deny that there was something bracing
about them when they first drifted down from Boston at the end of the '80s,
toting a sound that connected The Velvet Underground, The Modern Lovers, and
all the pretty wallpaper music coming out of the UK on 4AD. My main problem
with Galaxie 500 has always been that their songs run on too long given how
little movement there is within them (and how little variation between them).
What they mainly presented was a simple sonic idea, never quite developed into a
complete thought.

Gary Numan, "Me! I Disconnect
From You"

When
I was in college, I had a small clique of music-loving friends, and each of us
had one UK-based act that we obsessed over, collecting everything we could find
that had their name on it. For me, it was The Wedding Present; for my friend
Eric, The Fall; and for my friend Daryn, it was Gary Numan. It took me a while
to come around on Numan, who was too associated in my mind with his biggest
hit, "Cars" (a song I thought was awesome when I was 9, and silly when I was
18) as well as with all the images I remember seeing of him on TV riding around
stages in a giant neon pyramid. He seemed vaguely like a joke to me. But Daryn
wore me down with his frequent touting of the Tubeway Army albums and early
Numan solo stuff, and after hearing the sonic depth and computer-age paranoia
of "Are Friends Electric?" and "Me! I Disconnect From You," Numan started to
click in my head. (I even started to like "Cars" again.) It may be a cliché for
an electronic musician to sing about the alienation of technology, but given
Numan's spacey voice, I'm not sure he ever had much choice in the matter.
Anyway, when it all comes together, his sound is suitably clean and spooky.

Gary
Wilson, "Rhythm In Your Eyes"

Gary
Wilson's self-released 1977 curio You Think You Really Know Me was reissued in 2002,
and sounded so distinctively post-modern that some wondered if it was a Beck
record masquerading as a 25-year-old, 500-copy vanity release. Wilson's quivery
helium voice, over cheap drum machines and minimalist keyboards, make him sound
like the most charming stalker in town. His jazz-spiked new wave is so smooth
and his girl-crazy yelp is so… not. Wilson's no musical genius, but even in his
recent comeback, he's maintained an almost obsessive focus on forging a
singular, unified sound from influences that encompass the obviously catchy as
well as the freeform. Wilson then filters everything through his nerdy loverman
persona. Only a handful of musicians had heard of Wilson prior to Beck's
mention of him in the song "Where It's At," but his work has been an
inspiration nonetheless—proof that home recording doesn't have to be
limited to lo-fi punk and basement-pop symphonies, and proof that artists doesn't
always need to worry about finding an audience.

Gay
Dad, "To Earth With Love"

Nobody
turns out "next big thing"s with the fervor and high turnover rate of the
British, and Gay Dad were a particularly spectacular flame-out, memorable because
of the band's unforgettable name and because of bandleader Cliff Jones' side
career as a member of the very UK press often responsible for pumping up the
NBTs before tearing them down. Yet even though Gay Dad's much-anticipated debut
album was no masterpiece, the band did throw together a few grand
singles—and none better than their first, "To Earth With Love," which
recalls Hothouse Flowers and New Radicals in the way it evokes a party in the
midst of reaching its peak.

Gene
Loves Jezebel, "Desire"

This
kind of semi-goth post-punk—with an L.A.-style studio kick—sounded
at the time like a corruption of the movement towards making rock music for
dance clubs, and reminiscent of the way that the disco movement of the
mid-to-late-'70s became degraded by scores of cookie-cutter singles with
insipid lyrics and interchangeable instrumental parts. And yet, just like a lot
of that disco pap now sounds better in retrospect, so "Desire" seems much less
offensive now than it might've in 1986. Now it's a worthy example of the John
Hughes-ification of the pop charts in the mid-'80s, and it makes some of us
nostalgic for the days when scrappy radio stations like Los Angeles' KROQ could
make a real difference in the business.

Gene
Marshall, "All You Need Is A Fertile Mind"

I
have no idea where I got this—probably from a music blog—and I
don't think I'd ever listened to it before this week. And, uh…yeah. You gotta
hear it. Especially if you're a heavy consumer of pornography. This song will
make you think twice.

Gene
Vincent, "Dance To The Bop"

What
I've always liked best about Vincent is his mastery of the ol' rockabilly
creep-up, where the bandleader sings with slow mounting intensity and his boys
hold slightly longer spaces between the notes, until finally they go all-in and
start rockin' your ass. These dudes understood that "rock 'n' roll" used to
mean "sex," and they were determined to keep that association up front.

George
Clinton, "Do Fries Go With That Shake?"

I've
mentioned before that all my Funkadelic and Parliament is on cassette, so this
may be my only chance to write about Clinton, an artist about whom, frankly, I
have some reservations. I enjoy many Clinton songs, from across his many manifestations,
but I've always had a hard time reconciling the disconnect between his
visionary music and stagecraft and the often puerile content of his lyrics. I
know the scatology is necessarily intertwined with Clinton's sociopolitical
ideals, in that he's all about freeing you from your inhibitions… but I kind of
like my inhibitions. That said, Clinton undeniably pioneered several still
vital and useful sounds, including the bottom-heavy electro-funk of the early
'80s. He's earned my respect, and sometimes even my affection. But I've never
gotten all that close to him.

The
Germs, "Lexicon Devil"

This
one goes out to one of our valued regular commenters… You know who you are.
(Obligatory music-related content: I'd never really noticed until this week how
on record, The Germs resembled the UK variety of punk more than the kind coming
out of their native L.A. This song in particular is snappier and less
assaultive than Fear or Black Flag. Sort of makes you wonder what they might've
become, had Darby Crash not been such a fuck-up.)

Gerry
& The Pacemakers, "Ferry 'Cross The Mersey"

I
don't suppose it's too much of an embarrassment to say that my first exposure
to this song was via Frankie Goes To Hollywood's cover, since it's not like
"Ferry 'Cross The Mersey" is some kind of canonical rock classic. It's not
really "rock" at all in fact, despite The Pacemakers' former reputation as The
Beatles' biggest rival in the Liverpool rock scene. This is pure cinematic pop,
tailor-made for the opening credits of some early-'60s romantic comedy.

Gerry
Rafferty, "Right Down The Line"

There
are limits to studying pop music via shadowing, as I've discovered more than
once after buying albums or anthologies by artists who really don't have much
to offer beyond their best-known hits. Last year, I picked up a "two albums on
one CD" collection of Gerry Rafferty's City To City and Night Owl, perhaps swayed by the
memory of the time back in college when one of my roommates bought a used
Rafferty hits collection in order to have a copy of "Baker Street," and was
thrilled to find "Right Down The Line," another soft-rock classic that we'd
both forgotten. But aside from "Baker Street" and "Right Down The Line," City
To City
is pretty dire, and Night Owl's not much better. Even the merits of City
To City's
two good songs may be due as much to the sound of the times—that slinky,
moody atmosphere that Dire Straits also did so well—than to Rafferty's
songwriting skills. That said, I do still plan to dig back at some point into
Stealers Wheel, Rafferty's pre-City To City band, whom I heard at
length years ago and recall having more to offer than just "Stuck In The Middle
With You." I've also heard some good stuff by The Humblebums, the band Rafferty
was in with Scottish comedian Billy Connolly back in the late '60s. So
Rafferty's got a fairly decent CV. He just tails off dramatically after 1978.

The
Get Up Kids, "How Long Is Too Long"

Outside
of Guilt Show,
I've had a hard time getting into Kansas City pop-punkers The Get Up Kids,
because both their songwriting and their subject matter have always seemed so
minor to me, and somewhat choked off by the band's earnestness. On Guilt
Show
they found a sweet spot, putting Matthew Pryor's cooing, boyish voice in front
of classic pop arrangements—complete with piano accents, acoustic
bridges, moody electronic/orchestral interludes and climactic crescendos—that
bring a touch of class to what might otherwise be standard half-hook emo,
faintly catchy but fundamentally unmemorable. Consequently, a song like "How
Long Is Too Long" zooms and swoops, but ultimately follows a constantly
changing flow, like the frank conversation that it's meant to recall. Of
course, because it is The Get Up Kids, the conversation is a one-sided
post-adolescent lament—the line that follows "how long is too long" is,
naturally, "when you're waiting by the phone"—but for a fleeting moment,
The Get Up Kids make self-absorption almost heroic.

Ghosty,
"Add/Drop City"

I
haven't heard the most recent Ghosty album, but I'm curious to learn whether
they've built on the promise of their debut, a slight collection of indie-rock
songs shaped primarily by bandleader Andrew Connor's distinctive songwriting
personality. Connor's words and melodies sound almost improvised, like he's
speaking off the cuff while spontaneously remembering some tunes from an old
K-Tel AM Gold
collection. The shambling style falls apart at times, but Connor keeps his
happy-thoughts-and-sharp-hooks dream aloft for an impressively long time. Is
that the best Ghosty can do? Does it matter? These are the
questions that nag at a critic.

Gil
Scott-Heron, "Winter In America"

Scott-Heron
worked with keyboardist/flautist Brian Jackson on this 1974 lament, which like
most of Scott-Heron's work has echoes of beat poetry, Afrobeat, and
jazz-fusion. This would be an example of a political song that falls in the
middle between eloquently persuasive and intentionally unsubtle and didactic.
But as much as any of Scott-Heron's often haunting turns of phrase, what makes
this song so powerful is the martial beat and mournful instrumentation, which
convey a sense of giving up. It's not a song to inspire; it's one to ease the
pain of losing something dear.

Gilbert
O'Sullivan, "A Woman's Place"

Here's
another political song of a kind, and equally depressing in its way. Or is its
old-fashioned chauvinism cute? Can we learn to love it and accept it the way we
love and accept our sweetly crotchety grandparents and their painfully
insensitive comments about the immigrants who prune their trees? It helps some
that O'Sullivan always was a fairly quirky (and talented) artist, almost like
an Irish Harry Nilsson. Still…ick.

Gilberto
Gil, "Andar Com Fé"

Like
a lot of music-lovers of my generation, I was first turned onto Brazilian pop
by the David Byrne-curated Beleza Tropical anthology, a really remarkable set that
contained an eclectic batch of catchy songs by the honest-to-goodness cream of
the crop, like Jorge Ben, Caetano Veloso, Milton Nascimento, and Gilberto Gil (the
latter of whom used a light, everybody-sing-along style to convey substantive
content). Beleza Tropical was the perfect record for world-music
dabblers, because it gave those who wanted to dig further a good group of
artists to start with, and those who were happy to skim the surface a few
relevant names to drop in conversation.

Gillian
Welch, "Paper Wings"

I'm
not completely sold on Welch, who's always seemed to be trying too hard to turn
Patsy Cline into performance art, by stripping down retro-country to as few

elements as possible. She has an amazing voice—and on songs like this
beguilingly moody nothing, that's plenty—but I tend to feel that she and
her frequent collaborators are holding something back, just to be difficult.
And I don't always see the point of it.

Gin
Blossoms, "Hey Jealousy"

A
friend of mine picked up New Miserable Experience shortly after it came
out in 1992, in part because he liked the name "Gin Blossoms" and in part
because he was getting into the spreading alt-country scene that Gin Blossoms
were almost a part of. Shortly after he got the record, he started
proselytizing about "Hey Jealousy," a fluid, tuneful rock song that—in
the context of the indie-rock he and I were immersed in at the
time—sounded pretty amazing. A year later, I started hearing "Hey
Jealousy" on the radio, and soon after that, Gin Blossoms weren't some upstart
roots-rock band. They'd become, like Goo Goo Dolls and Soul Asylum before them,
the major-label arena-rock heroes they were never quite cut out to be. Now when
I hear the song, I'm not sure whether to associate it with what I thought Gin
Blossoms were when I first heard them, or what they turned into.

Girl
Talk, "That's My DJ"

When
we did a Random Rules with Greg Gillis (a.k.a. Girl Talk) last year, we had a
contentious discussion in the comments section from people who felt that
Gillis' ignorance of some of the music on his iPod reflected badly on him, and
that as a mere DJ, he was hardly one to sit in judgment on actual musicians.
But I don't know…Girl Talk's Night Ripper is a hell of a record, and one of the
truest realizations of the early sampling experiments of Double Dee &
Steinski. It's dizzying in its density, and a great deal of fun to boot. I know
I wouldn't be able to make the pop connections that Gillis does, or to combine
so many different sounds so seamlessly. He's a musician in my book.

Godrays,
"Both Your Names"

Rising
from the ashes of Small Factory, Godrays were one of the last of the first wave
of indie-rock (as clearly distinguished from college rock, alternative rock,
and modern rock). Unlike current indie-rock, the original brand had a more
unified sound—sloppy, guitar-based, melodic and indifferently sung, and
frequently dressed up with excessive basement orchestration—and was
usually parceled out on singles and LPs that wore their no-big-dealness as a
badge of honor. This was the alternative to alternative, meant to sound
intimate and off-the-cuff, and not like just another arena-rock band that had
been weaned on punk instead of Foreigner. Most of the indie-rock of that era is
decidedly "you had to be there," but part of what made it so refreshing to
those of us who haunted indie record shops is that every now and then a band
like Godrays would bury a catchy, exciting rock song like this one deep on Side
Two of an album nobody bought. And then, long after we'd forgotten all about
Small Factory and Godrays, we'd find the song in our CD collection, and think,
"Oh wow…now
I know why I used to think this stuff was so good."

The
Good Life, "Album Of The Year"

As
a bookend to the column I wrote about rock auteurists a few week's back, I'm
going to write in some future week about rock-by-committee, and one of the
things I want to explore is whether you have to eschew collaboration if you
want to write lyrics as unselfconsciously corny (but effective) as Tim Kasher does
with Cursive and The Good Life. I know Kasher works with others on his music,
arrangements, and production, but I can't imagine him running lyrics like those
on "Album Of The Year" by anyone else for final approval. "Album Of The Year"
would be more impressive if Kasher didn't write so many songs that document the
specific details of fractured relationships, but still, on its own
merits—for those willing to go with Kasher's drift, and able to stomach
lines like "we started laughing 'til it didn't hurt"—this song's
references to John Fante and Elliott Smith and its sketch of a romance from
start to finish are stunning in their fullness and believability. It's like a
Gen-Y version of Harry Chapin's "Taxi."

Regrettably
unremarked upon:
Gang Starr, Garbage, Gary U.S. Bonds, Gemma Hayes, Gene Pitney, Generation X,
George Winston, Giant Sand, Gil Evans, Girls Against Boys,
Gladys Knight & The Pips, Gnarls Barkley, Go To Blazes, Godley & Crème,
The Go-Betweens, The Go! Team, Gonzales, Gordon Lightfoot, The Gories and
Gorillaz

Also
listened to:
G. Love & Special Sauce, Gal Costa, Galactic, Galaga, Gallery, Gamble Brothers
Band, Gamble Rogers, Ganger, The Gants, Gary
Bennett, Gary Glitter, Gary Lews & The Playboys, Gary Puckett & The
Union Gap, Gaspar Lawal, The Gates Of Eden, Gato Barbieri,
Gaunt, Gaylads, The Gena Rowlands Band, Gene, Gene Allison, Gene Autry, Gene Chandler, Gene Harris,
General Johnson, Generation Gap, Gentleman Reg, Geoff Love & His Orchestra, Geoff Muldaur, George Baker, George
Marinelli, George McGregor & The Bronzettes, George Pegram,
Georges Delerue, Georgia Crackers, Georgie James, Gerald
Collier, Gerald Price, Gershon Kingsley, Get Him Eat Him, The Get
Quick, Get Set Go, The Ghost Is Dancing, Ghostface Killah, Ghostigital, Ghostland, Giant Drag, Giddy Motors, Gift Of Gab, Gingersol, Girls In Hawaii, Girls Of The Golden West, The Gits, The
Glass, Glasseater, Gleaners, Glen Hansard, Glenn Adams, Glenn Lewis, Gloria
Gaynor, Gloria Jones, Glory Fountain, The Go, The Go Find, Go West,
go[machine], The Goatdancers, GoGoGo Airheart, Gojira, Goldcard, Golden, The Golden Dogs, Golden,
Golden Earring, The Golden Gate Jubilee, Golden Gate Quartet, The Golden Republic, Goldenboy, Goldie Lookin' Chain, Goldrush, Gonga, Gonzaguinha, The Goo Goo Dolls, The Good Mornings, Goodbye
Girl Friday, The Goodnight Loving, Goodthunder and The Goons Of Doom

Next week: From Graham Nash to
The Hidden Cameras, plus a few words on mind-changing albums